Google Ranking And Traffic Tips For Hubbers

Google Ranking Tips

There are several no-nonsense search engine ranking optimization approaches that are often ignored by webmasters and writers that will undoubtedly improve your visibility and traffic volume in both the short and long term. This article is based on what has worked for me, through trial and error and a sprinkling of mentoring, and continues to serve me well to this day.

The objective? An easy, manageable routine that will improve Google rankings almost instantly. This guide works best for those targeting niches, relying principally on high-quality, white-hat content to achieve their goals. All you need is some common sense, an open mind, and the willingness to give it a shot without caving in after a couple of weeks. Stick to it, and remember to thank me later!

Reducing Luck

The first three things we're going to include in our routine are the following:

There are many greyhat and blackhat methods to do these, I'll mention them in passing, but to be honest I've opted for whitehat techniques myself, they have proven more reliable.

Step 1 - Content Optimization

Content is King, and you'll be surprised at how efficient Google has become at weeding out poor quality web pages. Aside from the content itself, you will want to avoid letting spiders fill in the blanks as much as possible, meaning you should put a little effort into telling your search engine of choice what your page is about.

We'll begin by researching relevant keywords. My personal choice is to mix three long tail keywords along with two more competitive broader search terms. This will allow you to gain greater visibility and conversion through a targeted niche, but will also give you room to expand. As time goes by use Google analytics (or your hub stats) to find out what additional keywords people use to access your hubs and incorporate them as well. Keyword analysis warrants an article all by itself, but my advice would be to use one of the following (or preferably a couple in tandem) tools:

Market Samurai (commercial)

Market Samurai is an incredibly popular tool that goes well beyond what free tools are able to offer. It will allow you customized keyword ideas into money-making niche bombs by filtering competition, popularity and monetized potential.

A free 40 day trial is available for everyone. If you haven't checked it out, you should, and it won't cost you a thing.

Micro Niche Finder (commercial)

My tool of choice, unfortunately there isn't a trial available, but there are a free selection of videos you can browse to give you a better idea. This tool is particularly apt for those who need a lot of keyword ideas on a daily basis.

Google Keyword Tool (free)

Despite lacking many of the tools commercial software offer, it is a great starting point for keyword analysis and with the appropriate filtering can give you a decent a priori indication of what to expect from your keywords.

The tool is entirely free and I recommend it as a healthy starting point. Try it out now by clicking here.

How sharp is your content?

On Page SEO

Once you have your keywords, its time to write your article. Remember to use the keywords generated in the previous step. Try and incorporate them judiciously (do NOT overuse them) in the URL, title and headings. Any links you add should point to highly relevant, high quality resources that will genuinely benefit readers! The anchor text in a link is part of the way Google knows what your own content is about, both internal and external.

The bottom-line is this: Creating high-quality, information-rich content will get you noticed. If you fail to deliver the goods, you can expect some measure of short-term gains, but will crash out in the long haul.

Getting Indexed

Where's Waldo.com?

Rapid Indexing

Here is a quick reference list to ensure efficient and timely indexing by Google.

How-Tos

Submitting a Sitemap

The first thing you'll want to do is create an account at Google Webmasters and upload your sitemap (yes, you can do this with your Hubpages profile too!). A sitemap is a file (usually denoted by an .xml extension) which instructs search engine robots on how and where to crawl your site.

Bear in mind that many plugins are available for popular content management websites such as WordPress and Joomla that will do this for you. For instance, this wordpress plugin will automatically generate a sitemap file and ping it for you:

A second thing to bear in mind is that the Yahoo search engine has been laboriously gaining ground, and might be worth investing time in as well. Yahoo also hosts its own webmaster tools page which can be found here: Yahoo Site Explorer

Do Follow Links: Links which instruct search engine crawlers to follow them. High value DoFollow back links are a goldmine for marketers because they improve both rankings and indexing speed.

Speeding Up Bookmarking

Ping.fmPing.fm is a simple and FREE service that makes updating your social networks a snap!

Link Building

Since we're looking for a rapid routine, here's a quick list (an exhaustive list would be enormous, these are those that I use and find that work) I advise back-linking from every-time you create new content. This is especially useful for new pages on content driven sites such as Hubpages or Squidoo. Note: I've added my affiliate link where applicable, I'm not trying to heist you, I do use these services myself. If it bothers you feel free to remove the affiliate link from the URL.

GoArticles (PR 4) (A great way to get your links plastered across the web)

The Importance of Blogs

You may wonder why I left blog platforms out of my routine. I haven't -- in actual fact I wanted to devote a couple of paragraphs to their importance and role in my personal back-linking strategy. One of my low profile blogs (currently a PR 1 hosted on blogger) is indexed extremely rapidly, and when I say rapidly, I mean within the hour. Despite its low-key role in the big scheme of things I have found that creating blog posts about my content and then marketing them has had an excellent impact on traffic and rankings. If you have the time, employ the same bookmarking techniques listed above to promote your blog bookmarks. Sit back, and enjoy the ascent.

Don't have a blog? Try these two free hosts (I strongly advise shelling out a few bucks for personalized domain names which revolve around your keywords, however):

Black Hat Techniques

Right down at the bottom of the article, in the hopes to weed out the lightweights. Here is a list of blackhat techniques often used to gain an unnatural competitive advantage. Most of these are unethical and prone to a good spanking by Google (I don't use these, but it wouldn't be a realistic reference were I do omit them).

Profile Building - Using the profile pages on high rank websites and forums to promote your product and generate back links.

Spamming Stat Pages - Blasting your webpage to high quality websites' stat pages create temporary back-links which will result in a flood of crawlers rushing to your page. I'm not going to provide you with this tool, it's easy enough to find. Bear in mind you will anger many webmasters as well as potentially get reported to Spamhaus, use judiciously.

Autoblogging - Creating a network of made-for-profit blogs that populate themselves with comments and content (usually including posts of affiliate offers, Amazon and crowned with Adsense). Will usually lead to Adsense account closure and can cause immense server load issues and irritate your hosting company (so if you plan on running an autoblog empire shoot for VPS or dedicated hosting plans).

Article Spinning - Using software to automatically "spin" articles in an attempt to make them look genuine. Saves you the time and effort of writing. Thankfully, the result is almost always laughable.

Thanks!

Thank you for slugging through this article, I have tried to be honest in my approach although I realize that when it comes to marketing everyone has their own strategy. I hope you will find this content useful, and I wish you the best in your endeavors. For suggestions or flat-out criticism, please use the comment module!

Comments

No HTML is allowed in comments, but URLs will be hyperlinked. Comments are not for promoting your articles or other sites.

sending

Brie Hoffman 3 years agofrom Manhattan

I tried getting a site map for my hubpage site with XML and it didn't work do you have any recommendations?

Stellar Phoenix 5 years ago

This content is wicked! You certainly know how to keep a reader happy. Between your wit and your pictures, I was almost moved to start my own blog (well, almost..hehe) Wonderful job. I really loved what you had to say, and more than that, how you presented it. Too cool! Stellar Phoenix Review

google seo 5 years ago

Well, that is my first check out to thooghun.hubpages.com ! We are a group of volunteers and starting a brand new initiative in a regional community in the exact same niche. Your blog supplied us valuable information to work on. You have done a marvellous task!

Slaven Cvijetic 6 years agofrom Switzerland, Zurich

Very interesting blog! Well, then let's try it out.

Useful and VOTE UP!

Bryce 6 years agofrom Northern California Coast

Thanks for this comprehensive overview of white hat techniques. Just what I needed to find right now! Great details and organization.

alocsin 7 years agofrom Orange County, CA

Nicely done and quite a lot of information.

Seoservicehub 7 years ago

Thanks a lot for such information.

amymarie_5 7 years agofrom Chicago IL

Google keyword tool is the best thing I've tried. My traffic increased immediately!! It was exciting to see that. Thanks for all the great tips!!!

Jamie Brock 7 years agofrom Texas

Wow.. that's LOTS of information! Thank you- Voted up and useful.

Kelly347 7 years ago

Great tips~ thanks for sharing! I voted up.

amymarie_5 7 years agofrom Chicago IL

Awesome! I've used some of your tips and I'm seeing a significant increase in traffic to my hubs. Thank you!!

Glemoh101 7 years ago

I think the best tool to improve your page rank is market samurai.

Create a Website - Tutorials 7 years ago

That is really useful info. Hubpages is awesome, and is probably all you need for linkbuilding.

SEO 7 years ago

Wow! That is a plethora of great information, thanks.

dablufox 7 years agofrom Australia

Some good solid advice, I hope you don't mind if I steal some of your ideas. Thanks for your honesty and all the best!

kev8 7 years ago

Thanks for the above,it is very relevant to a number of projects I am working on at the moment.I am book marking it and will refer back to it again. Thanks again!!!

zuky123 7 years ago

lol...nice

Bennett Thompson 7 years agofrom Portland, OR

Great post! So I checked out your targeted keywords for this post and saw 'search engine ranking optimization' on page 1 of Google's SERP. A fairly competitive keyword phrase with some descent traffic. The proof is in the pudding. Thank you for sharing this.

Leann Zarah 7 years ago

Nice hub. Thanks for creating it. :)

belko002 7 years agofrom Atlanta, GA

So do you think blackhat methods should be completely avoided or do you think you should mix "gray hat" tactics into your marketing strategy? I'm really curious about this because I've heard so much conflicting evidence and opinions on both sides.

GordonCampbell 7 years ago

Excellent info here and cracking links, I've saved them to a word document.

Thanks for writing that hub, much appriciated.

Gordon.

tony 7 years ago

You have outline very important point that are essential in optimizing the web. I love to promote the use of white hat ways in optimizing since they are more permanent and gives you real people and not fake identities.

Thank you for sharing.

Flaura78 7 years agofrom UK

I am telling you this is the first time I came across you but the stuff you published here is pretty powerful. Some so called gurus would write a book and sell this info for big bucks!

Thanks for sharing!

joyce.blue 7 years ago

Fantastic hub! seo really plays a great part for a site's success. All the information you have said is really helpful and can help many people.

giwrgos12 7 years agofrom San Diego

Awesome Hub-page. I add this Hub-page to my bookmarks

DIY Backlinks 7 years ago

very good source of information on this article. Thanks for a good read.

Les Trois Chenes 7 years agofrom Videix, Limousin, South West France

Is Waldo really there? I'm bookmarking this to get back to when I have PLENTY of time to absorb all this info. Looks great.

pedrog 7 years ago

Thanks for sharing this great information, i'm always trying to improve myself reading other hubbers experience, this hub is full of useful information, thanks.

jackie.t 7 years ago

Hi, great hub and thanks for posting the link building list, it's my personal hate that one!

Jesse Broman 7 years agofrom Los Angeles

First off, thanks for the info.

I think many don't release that white-hat techniques are inherently a better strategy for success. when you do things like participating in hubpages or some kind of online community building for links, rather than spamming you are guaranteed to get more traffic. not only that, you will get more SUPPORT!

Hubpages is awesome, and is probably all you need for linkbuilding.

ns1209 7 years agofrom UK - England

This is a really nice, thorough hub and I thank you for it!

L a d y f a c e 7 years agofrom Canada

This hub is awesome! Well written, detailed, informative... thank you for sharing!

Audrey Selig 7 years agofrom Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

This article is excellent. Thank you for sharing your expertise with us. It will take a while to digest it, but I am patient and will read it carefully. I am following you, and have enjoyed several of your hubs, referring my daughter to one of them on flirting. Happy writing.

stagticket 7 years agofrom Toronto, Ontario

Amazing, i appreciate your list of link building sites. Much appreciated.

Author

James D. Preston 7 years agofrom Rome, Italy

Thank you all!

FYS: Thank you, it took me awhile to find something suitable -- as you say -- its always a challenge ;)

FindYourSearch 7 years agofrom Las Vegas, NV

Fantastic article! Can't believe I didn't see it sooner. Extra props for the "Where's Waldo" image. It's always a challenge to find a fresh image to illustrate SEO concepts. :)

SHILAHO 7 years ago

This is wonderful information. Thanks a lot.

iamalegend 7 years agofrom EARTH

cool dude

jesslsch 7 years agofrom Westminster, MD

Thank you so much for your help, this hub will help me immensely as I am brand new at this whole thing!

wicklesscandles 7 years ago

Wonderful hub. You mention a couple of sites I was not aware of or taking advantage of. This will be very helpful.

Author

James D. Preston 7 years agofrom Rome, Italy

Thank you IndikaT, glad I was of use!

IndikaT 7 years agofrom Kandy,Sri Lanka

really useful information and now I am your follower

Author

James D. Preston 7 years agofrom Rome, Italy

Hi Ileane, I'm glad I was of help!

Ileane 7 years agofrom Philadelphia, PA

Hi Tooghun. I learned a lot in the Hub and in the questions generated by the comments.

I have free blogs from wordpress and blogger and just launched a self hosted wordpress blog. It's a great way to build links for myself.

Richard Goutal 7 years ago

Thanks again!

Author

James D. Preston 7 years agofrom Rome, Italy

Exactly Richard ;)

Richard Goutal 7 years ago

Thanks so much for that fast answer. Much appreciated. Willing to straighten me out once more? "I'll use the Do Follow bookmarking sites for the backlink SEO value, and the No Follow bookmarking sites for the organic 'buzz' value - understanding that it would take a lot more bookmarks to make much of a buzz." Does that statement sound reasonable to you?

Author

James D. Preston 7 years agofrom Rome, Italy

Hi Richard good question!

I use social bookmarking in part for back links, and in part for organic traffic. Unlike article marketing and directory submission (blogging... and a lot more!), then, duplicate content syndication is less of an issue.

Google themselves have stated repeatedly that duplicate content does not penalize a website, but it is given very little weight (otherwise we'd all spam our competitors off the rankings). Since a social backlink is generally worth little anyway, with the exception of traffic, you aren't losing very much in terms of juice.

Richard 7 years ago

Very much appreciated the article. But I was hoping to find an "expert" opinion: Is using social bookmarking services like pingfm, onlywire, etc... self-defeating? Somewhere (wish I knew where) I got the idea that if you bookmark 20 sites at the same time with the same keywords and description, the search engine algorithms see this and discount the value of such bookmarking. Worse, the searchengine downgrades the bookmarked site (slap?). So is there, or is there not a danger in using submitter services that the relevant site could be harmed in page rank etc.??

Author

James D. Preston 7 years agofrom Rome, Italy

Thanks everyone, I'm having a hard time keeping up!

Kelly Kline Burnett 7 years agofrom Madison, Wisconsin

Great resource! Wonderful! Have bookmarked!

KKalmes 7 years agofrom Chicago, Illinois

Hello thooghun, my head is spinning... "too much input", but I love it. This stuff is slowly sinking into the quicksand that acts a sieve for my brain. There is so much info here that I bookmarked your site and bookmarked half of the reference sites... I'm going to be so smart one of these days and rich!

thumbs up and useful... although, a better rating would be excellent.

RedElf 7 years agofrom Canada

Thanks for the solid and easy to understand instructions! I have read many hubs on this and similar topics, but this is one of the best explanations of the techniques. Rated and voted up :D

davies856 7 years agofrom UK

Thats a very good article there but I would be wary of the auto blogs.

I have a small list of methods I use with is traffic rather than SEO focussed and easy to implement. Check my own post on traffic

Artoflegendindia 7 years ago

Great hub.Thank you for sharing your knowledge.your hub is a helpful for ours. when we will want to improve our sites ranking your hub will help me. your hub teach how to improve sites ranking with the help of Google tools, seo,market samurai.I appreciate your hub.keep it up.

www.artoflegendindia.com

kevinpeterson 7 years ago

Hey,

I have heard a lot about Market Samurai. Here also are two positive feedbacks in comments. First of all let me try with free 40 day trial software.

Thanks for such an informative hubpage.

socaldave 7 years agofrom Los Angeles

Very concise article full of valuable reference material. This hub is at top of my list to bookmarkr; keep up the great work. I would, however caution against blackhat methods because the long term risk far outweighs the short term gains.

belliott 7 years ago

Great summary of SEO best practices. Great job!

couponalbum 7 years agofrom Sunnyvale, CA

This is one of the best and complete article on SEO. Well done!! Bookmarked it!

hubpageswriter 7 years ago

Amazing hub and lots to learn for sure. I can never deny the blogging part as it works wonders for sure. I'm going to have to bookmark this hub, well done. I enjoy this so much.

kevin 7 years ago

This is one thing i love about hub pages. Great community and great info from folks like yourself.

kevin 7 years ago

very good hub. Thanks. Ive been reading a lot about promoting as an essential part of online life and your article sets the parameters nicely. Soon as i finish my new website im gonna become a promotion master ! ha !

Your Knowledge 7 years ago

Great info, thanks!

Foredi 7 years agofrom Jakarta

I know you are master of SEO. I like all your explain. Bookmark :)

Author

James D. Preston 7 years agofrom Rome, Italy

Thanks Kids!

@Nancy: If you don't know what you are doing it can happen, yes. Thanks for your time!

@McConnell: I haven't really provided the means, but it may be as you say. However, even though I don't use these methods, it pays to know about them. Thanks for your feedback!

Shawn McCconnell 7 years agofrom Mississauga, Ontario

I support all your white hat techniques but even suggesting blackhat method to newbs who will read this and try it out isn't the best.

nancybotwin 7 years agofrom San Jose

this is an interesting hub. but i wonder about black hat tactics. i would be scared to use them because you can get your online presence kicked off, can't you??

kidsgamesonline 7 years agofrom uk

Thank you for the detailed article. i have been using Market Samurai for a while now and its truly amazing software.

legendindia 7 years ago

Great hub.Your hub is a very informative.I think you have a much knowledge about Google Ranking optimization.

www.artoflegendindia.com

UNLOVED ROHIT 7 years ago

thanks for sharing your knowledge

lulubell1798 7 years ago

Thank you ! you have good hubs

Author

James D. Preston 7 years agofrom Rome, Italy

Thanks for the heads up Bp, I will note it!

Babypushchairs 7 years ago

Please note that Squidoo is similar to Hubpages. They are both nofollow until they accumulate a certain number of points.

Nice Hub...thanks

Author

James D. Preston 7 years agofrom Rome, Italy

Thank you infanttoddlerclth!

@Duchess: Thanks for the feedback and bookmarks!

Duchess OBlunt 7 years ago

SEO, google, twitter, so much information. I try hard to get it right, and am always reading whatever I can to update my information. This is a great read with so much useful information. Had to share it. And I am looking forward to your blackhat marketing article. In the meantime I will definately visit the blackhatworld.com forum you mentioned above.

Thanks. This one is shared and bookmarked.

infanttoddlerclth 7 years agofrom USA

Hi! this Hub is awesome. The information is very informative and concise. I Rated, Followed, Shared and Bookmarked it. Thanks for sharing. =)

Author

James D. Preston 7 years agofrom Rome, Italy

Correct tthudium, it isn't much right now though ;)

tthudium 7 years ago

So squid stop is a website YOU own. Looks pretty interesting

Author

James D. Preston 7 years agofrom Rome, Italy

the creator, I'm currently building a hub dedicated to blackhat marketing. If you can hang in there it will be up soon! ;)

If you can't, you could browse popular forums such as blackhatworld.com and get a feel for it.

the creator 7 years ago

I'm interested in blackhat techniques any suggestions?

Awesome hub very informative.

xnotion 7 years ago

very helpful, thank you!

BMG 7 years agofrom timor laste

great hub....thanks

Laura Izett 7 years agofrom The Great Northwest

I'm probably the only one to say I have no clue what you were talking about. I guess I need to learn a lot more before I understand the message here. My take home message was I am more computer illiterate than I thought.

Prakash T 7 years agofrom Pune

Great ideas. I will surely implement your strategies in my websites.

Hats off to you for providing the public tons of useful info.

BadSelfHelp 7 years agofrom San Diego, CA

Nicely done. Very clear and concise.

shovan. 7 years ago

Hi man i am new in hubpages..i take your suggestion..it's very helpful.

hira81 7 years agofrom Dhaka, Bangladesh

Very resourceful hub. Thanks.

rajan1311 7 years agofrom bangalore, India

great hub sir, will be registering on your site soon :)

also, I tried registering on squidoo, but they say I can register there as too many spammers are from my "area", any workaround for that ?

Will be sharing this article with my friends :)

nikitha p 7 years agofrom India

very informative and nice hub!

growtharc 7 years ago

Ohhhh. This is a complete article. I really liked it. Really Gr8 one.

TechViaggio 7 years ago

Good points. One caveat about sitemaps is some people think they solve all their problems. In other words, their sites have navigational or crawling issues that should be fixed, but because they've submitted a sitemap, they think they are OK.

Also, when people are considering long tail keywords they should also look at the search frequency and competition. It doesn't do you any good to be #1 for a phrase only 4 people type into the search box.

stacyjwx 7 years agofrom MA

I found this information very useful!

Author

James D. Preston 7 years agofrom Rome, Italy

Thanks everyone:

@TruckinDr Yes, I suppose I might have gotten ahead of myself. Ironically my objective was to be as simplistic as possbile but I can see what you mean. Occasionally I assume the reader knows the jargon -- thank you for bringing it up, it is a valid point.

TruckinDr 7 years ago

Very informative to a person experienced in the terminology you were using I would assume, but to a newbie to these things a bit too overwhelming however just seeing a proper blog format is a great help.

SurferGirl1 7 years agofrom California

good seo article!

Medical Writer 7 years agofrom Great Britain

Thank you for listing the networkings sites with revenue share.

rui paiva 7 years agofrom Somewhere in the world

Excellent and useful Hub.

po 7 years ago

it's a good hub.

CarpetDiem 7 years agofrom Southern California

Thoog,

Great hub. You started with the most important point, Content is King. It's amazing how many people want to skip this... but if your content is junk (or even just average), why bother trying to get it to rank?

Now I'm off to check out your hub, How to Remove a Bra, which I noticed at the end of your article. Interesting change of subject. :) Steve

Aimee Leone 7 years agofrom London

Google Search Engine Ranking Optimization Tips is a good article for webmaster, i appreciate content writer, Thanks for article.

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